China fuelling major Moscow military expansion, says US

CHINA is providing Moscow with cruise missile, drone and tank parts, fuelling the biggest Russian military expansion since Soviet times, the US has warned.

US defence officials warned China is propping up Russia’s defence industrial base, funnelling weapons technology towards the war in Ukraine.

Joe Biden, the US president, raised concerns directly with Xi Jinping on April 2, warning the premier that America was unhappy with China’s huge support for the Russian military.

Yesterday, a Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, accused China of helping Moscow to meet its “most ambitious defence expansion since the Soviet era and on a faster timeline than we believed possible early on in this conflict.”

The US official told Reuters: “Our view is that one of the most gamechanging moves available to us at this time to support Ukraine is to persuade the PRC [China] to stop helping Russia reconstitute its military industrial base.”

“Russia would struggle to sustain its war effort without PRC input,” the official added.

China is accused of supplying Russia with machine tools to increase its ballistic missile production, which have allowed Vladimir Putin’s forces to outgun Ukraine on the battlefield.

Beijing is also thought to have provided Russia with drone engines, cruise missile turbojet engines and nitrocellulose, a chemical compound used to make propellants for weapons.

US intelligence suggests Chinese and Russian firms have worked jointly to produce drones inside Russia, with China helping to improve Russia’s satellite and space capabilities and provide satellite imagery for military purposes.

The US said that five Chinese companies were providing optical components for use in Russian tanks and armoured vehicles. They are Wuhan Global Sensor Technology Co, Wuhan Tongsheng Technology Co, Hikvision, iRay Technology and North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics.

Overall, the officials claimed, about 90 per cent of Russia’s micro-electronics used to make missiles, tanks and aircraft came from China, alongside 70 per cent of Russia’s approximately $900 million-worth of machine tools that had been imported in the last quarter of 2023.